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| Théodore Géricault |
The Raft of The Medusa at the Wikipedia
Julian Barnes at the Wikipedia
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters at the Wikipedia
The short story you’re going to read is a bit different from the ones we have read until now, but don’t get scared, because I’m going to help you.
The story
has two very different parts.
The first
part narrates the shipwreck, so it has a lot of naval vocabulary (there is a
glossary below), but don’t worry about it: to understand what happened you
don’t even it to look up these words in a dictionary: just go on reading. The
event is more or less like this: in the year 1816 a group of four French ships sailing
from a port near La Rochelle were heading south along the African coast. Due to
the incompetence of the commandments and/or adverse winds, the group of ships got
separated, and the last one got stuck in a reef and couldn’t go on sailing at
all; so the commandments ordered to leave the ship, but, as there were not
enough boats for all the passengers and crew, they decided to build a raft that
would be towed by the boats. But the raft couldn’t support so much weight, and
they had to throw away some food and drink; even so, when everybody was on board,
the raft was more than half a metre under water, and almost everybody on the
raft had their legs under water. But the worst was that the boats cut the ropes
that were tied to the raft to tow it, abandon it to their own fate and went
away. The situation on the raft was desperate: they didn’t have instruments to
navigate, neither rows nor a sail; they fight for better positions on the raft
and for food and water; during the night it was a storm; a lot of people died
or were murdered or committed suicide; there were cases of cannibalism… At the
end, only a few survived on the raft and were rescued by the ship Argus.
The survivals had decided to write down the events, and so now we know a lot of
details of the story.
The second
part narrates how Théodore Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa
(Medusa being the name of the stranded ship) and what was the public opinion
about the painting. This second part of the story doesn’t have vocabulary
problems (I think), but perhaps it isn't as moving as the first one, and it
demands an effort extra as it goes into art.
Julian
Barnes is very keen on art and has a book of essays about paintings and
painters called Keeping an Eye Open and the novel The Man in the RedCoat with a lot of art inside, or The Noise of the Time about the
Russian musician Shostakovich… So in his books we find a lot of history, art
and also politics.
This is the cover of the book I bought thirty years ago. In it, you can see the Ark of Noah and a part of a spaceship floating in a stormy sea in an intent to convey the contents of the book: the history and the sea. The idea of the book is similar to another famous book by Stefan Zweig: Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures. So, Barnes tells us about ten “and a half moment” in the History (real or literary) of the world but under a fictional vision with a short story form.
QUESTIONS for the first part of the story
Tell us in your words what the bad omen was.
What happened in the Canary Islands?
Why was Senegal important for the French?
What do you know about famous rafts? What do you know
about the raft of Odysseus?
Do you remember other famous shipwrecks?
What do you know about the myth of Medusa?
When the raft was ready with all the people on it,
they shouted “Vive le Roi!” What political moment was France in?
Tell us about the sufferings of the shipwrecked
people.
What cruel or repugnant but necessary actions did the
shipwrecked do? What would you do in your case?
What happened to the people who didn’t want to abandon
the ship?
Who rescued the shipwrecked, and what did the survivors
do afterwards?
QUESTIONS about Scene of Shipwreck, by
Géricault
Do you remember any film or novel about catastrophes?
Why do you think we like this kind of films if we already know how they end?
What do you know about Géricault (not the biography,
but some curious or interesting fact)?
Géricault shaved his head in order not to see anyone
and be locked in his studio working. Do you know more cases of artists who had
to do something radical to keep on working?
What human resources did Géricault use to paint more realistically
his painting?
What can you tell us about Delacroix?
“You can tell more by showing less”: What does this
saying mean? Can you give some examples?
What do you think about the title “Scene of Shipwreck”?
What other title would you have given to the picture?
Who is Venus Anadyomene?
As we can see that cannibalism is taboo in most societies, do you think eating meat would be so in some years?
(some) VOCABULARY (in context)
porpoises = sea mammals similar to dolphins
frigate, corvette, flute, brig = different kind of ships
banian fig
shallows = not deep water
lead = heavy metal used to measure the depth
ensign = junior lieutenant
luffing = losing wind
have a heel = incline to one side
astern = behind
pinnace = boat
soundings = measuring (the depth of the water)
billows = big waves
tags = strips of (e.g.) metal
pewter = metal mixture of tin and lead
supernumerary = extra